


Bachelor's Buttons

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Hanahaki Disease, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:54:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26680225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: Sometimes unrequited love hurts your heart. Other times, it's your lungs.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Kudos: 9





	Bachelor's Buttons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stregatrek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stregatrek/gifts).



In his dream, the surgeon - the  _ chief  _ surgeon, at least as far as Max’s fantasy life is concerned - is absent his mask. However, his eyes speak, just as if his mouth was obscured; they - whatever color they are, Max just can’t decide - ask for help. 

A surgical tray appears - as things will, in dreams. It is loaded with cruel, impersonal implements. They shine dully. The syringe makes his shoulders rise and scrunch in protectively; he  _ hates  _ needles. The ice pick makes no sense, but, even as he dreams, some part of him knows that dreams are weird. This particular one feels  _ borrowed _ . He doesn’t know what to do. 

He gets the sense that Charles is trying to speak. If he could, he’d say, “Max;” Max is sure of it. And, God, does he love his name in that accent. Once, Charles had called for him from Post Op and Klinger had dived straight into a fantasy of Charles calling for him from another room…  _ in their shared home _ . In this pleasing and impossible vision, he hadn’t answered, wanting to see how long his name - drawn out past its single syllable - would hang on the air. 

Charles is the only one in camp who ever calls him by his first name. Besides Potter, he’s the only one who occasionally uses feminine pronouns for him - and means them. Charles seems to get that Klinger intends his outfits to function as a sort of code. On days when he dresses up, Charles calls him “my dear girl,” and makes him blush.

Maxwell, however, does  _ not  _ call the Major “Charles.” If he tried, the Major would hear too much and probably demand an explanation and then where would he be? Facing down a blue discharge, probably. But this is a dream. 

“Charles? Are you okay?” 

The word “diagnostic” flashes between them and Klinger can hear Charles thinking - pretty snidely, really - that if one must ask, then something is obviously amiss. 

The Major’s lips part. 

A moon-white flower petal - Klinger thinks it is from a peony - slips out from between his lips to drift to the ground. A droplet of blood stains the edge.

Klinger knows, before he even reaches for it, that the bloody petal will be cool, even though it has originated, somehow, from inside Charles’ mouth. (God, what he’d give - whether it belonged to him or not - to be inside of that heat.) Charles licks his lips, tries again, and instead of words falling like hopeful coins into the wishing well of his waiting soul, another petal falls to the ground between them. 

They do not move but the dream shifts around them as dreams will and they kneel in a position Max knows too well from triage, from combat medics, but he’s in the wrong role. “Major?”

_ Come on, Charles,  _ he thinks.  **_Help_ ** _ me. Tell me what to do.  _

“Please.” 

He has no idea who says this. 

Charles drags Max’s fingers to his chest. Klinger has seen living chests laid open: the heart visibly beating, lungs doing their thing, but this is  _ Charles’  _ speciality, the thing Charles has trained a lifetime to do. They both know this is a dream; surely, in a dream, Charles can save his own heart? 

A new petal. 

The blood is darker. 

Max knows what that means. Not in a professional , medical capacity, perhaps, but in his heart. 

Charles is weakening. 

He holds onto the taller man’s shoulders, tries to ground him, warm him, reassure him that he hears whatever it is that Charles’ eyes say he’s desperate to say. 

The petals drop faster. 

_ Autumn in the lungs _ , Klinger thinks absurdly. 

Charles coughs, the sound a close cousin to that closing down of machinery and shutting up shop known as a death rattle. 

Klinger wakes up. 

He dresses - if that’s the right term for pulling on clothing haphazardly without looking at it - but leaves his curlers in. And then he’s standing in front of Father Mulcahy with the remnants of the dream like wisps of smoke in his eyes. 

“Can I borrow your expertise, Father?”

“Of course, my son. Spiritual matter?” He is already mentally searching for where he’s draped his stole. 

“One of your other expertises.” His brow wrinkles. “You sure are good at a lotta stuff, Father. Boxing, church stuff, the black market, taking care of kids…”

This list charms and surprises Mulcahy. “Thank you, Klinger. In this camp, we’re all jacks-of-all-trades, I suppose.” He knows that Klinger is, anyway. The man is a sentry, when needed, a corpsman, a kitchen helper, a nurse - and a fashion plate in every role. “How can I help?”

“Father, if I draw a flower, do you think you can tell me what it is?”

“You can draw?”

“Yeah. Hobby.” He could say more; he draws his clothing because he wants to  _ design  _ clothes… but he doesn’t know how Mulcahy will take it and it won’t change anything today. 

“Well, let’s see.” A few moments later, Mulcahy nods, thoughtfully. “I’m impressed, Klinger. That’s a Bride’s Dream Peony.” 

Klinger chews on his lip. “Flowers mean stuff, right Father? Sometimes?” He clamps his eyes tight, trying to remember. His cousins worked in the flower district; they used to create little bouquets full of symbolism. 

“Ah, the language of flowers. The Church knows something about that. Peonies… let me think a minute. Pink for love at first sight, I think. But white ones… riches. Honor. Marriage. Or shame.”

“That’s a lot of meaning for one plant,” Klinger jokes. But what he’s thinking is:  _ what about bloody ones? What do those mean?  _

***

“Something is wrong,” Charles confides to his CO. 

“I don’t much like to hear that from my specialist in thoracics,” Potter returns, looking as gruff and stern as he had in those first days of Charles’ arrival. 

“I do not enjoy feeling it, either.”

“You want me to send you up to Tokyo?”

“No. I just… Pierce, Hunnicutt… they, ah.”

“You want a professional.” 

“Yes.”

“But you’ll settle for an ex-cavalryman with a prescription pad, is that it?” 

“Yes, sir.” His eyes plead; he is scared. 

It turns out that he has reason to be. 

“Well, if that don’t beat all.” 

An error. Something layered on the film. It has to be. 

“Have you even seen a rose since you got here?”

“Just the fabric ones in Max’s hair.”

_ Careful of that Max business, Major. You’ll give yourself away and you’ve got bigger problems, I think.  _

“This is not possible!” he insists. 

But they have both heard of it. 

Both assumed it was a language error - a poor translation - a myth. 

But here it is, inside of him, clear on the X-ray as the curve of his ribs. His heart has a new cage. A living, growing cage. 

“We said that about candiru fish, too,” Potter points out. “It’s… small… that’s something anyway,” he adds, looking for a silver lining. 

But what does he tell this doomed, proud man before him? Stay out of the sun? Drink less water? 

“We’ll talk to the locals, but tell me this, Major, there is someone, isn’t there? It’s why you fought so very hard not to be reassigned here, yes?” 

“Yes. Colonel, may I confide in you?” 

Potter is grateful; if Winchester can reach out now, then it will be easier later. “You’ve always been welcome. The boys and girls of this unit (and Klinger, wherever he falls in between) are my kids, you know.” 

“I… I have not been a good son, sir.”

“Because you fight with me?” Potter laughs. “So does Pierce. Margaret.” 

He considers this. “I suppose.” 

“You wanted to say something, lad.” 

“My real father…” he trails off for a moment, then tells it as quick as he can: his flawed heart shown to him on X-ray (no wonder it could play host to this!), the “therapy” that hadn’t worked, the dates with starlets, with anyone who might turn his head  _ and  _ who was the appropriate gender. 

“My lord.”

“I… I am okay. Except now my heart  _ is  _ flawed.”  _ Flowering, in fact _ . “And I do not wish to die before my sister’s eyes. Keep me here until you cannot- then send me to Tokyo.”

“You won’t reach out to him, son? You won’t even try?”

He knows it will not work. “No, sir.”

“I could make it an order.” 

Charles holds his eyes; they both know that the heart is beyond military regulations. 

“Alright, son. Let me know what you need.” He wants to add that he is sorry. But there is still time. Perhaps it will not need said. He hopes as he watches Charles turn away. 

***

What Charles discovers as the flowers within him grow and bloom (he charts them through X-rays) is that, when he coughs them out, (a frightening process that terrifies him every time), they  _ do not die _ . He’s taken to storing the expelled petals in the pages of his books, then carrying them beyond the compound. It feels a little like spreading petals on the earth that will house his grave. 

There is no keeping a secret in this camp, but when Pierce talks about surgery, opposition comes from an unexpected quarter: Corporal Maxwell Klinger. 

“I’ve heard of this.”

Charles’ laugh is close to a wheeze; he tastes blood. “That does not surprise me, superstitious as you are.” 

“But this isn’t medicine!” he insists. “It’s… it’s magic! And if you try to operate, Captain, you’ll kill him!” 

There is no sound, medical reason, but the clarion pain in his voice stays the scalpels for the moment. 

The next time Charles chokes aromatic plant matter out of his lungs, Max kneels with him, pats his back until his throat clears, wipes the sweat from his brow. Says things like, “Easy, steady,” that make tears prick in his eyes and once, Charles  _ swears _ , “Major-baby.” 

He stays for the rest of the day, helping. Charles doesn’t know how he escaped his duties and doesn’t care. Constant coughing is exhausting and the end seems close. Every time the petals appear, Klinger uses a magazine as a dustpan to scoop them up and efficiently toss them out the door. 

“I thought you liked flowers.” 

“Not when they kill my best friend, I don’t.” 

Charles stares. “I did not realize.”

“Sure you did. I told you so the week you got here.” 

“Max,” he coughs out new cuttings, “you did not even  _ know me _ then.” 

Max doesn’t argue, but his eyes announce that he knows he’s right. “I haven’t been here one night that I wasn’t scared of dying. Never thought it could touch you, though.” 

Charles shrugs, plays at bravery. His breath is thin. Lung capacity depleted. “You will write to Honoria? Befriend her? The two of you will make a wonderful team.” 

“Of course.” He waits for him to stop coughing, closes his fist on a handful of flowers; tiny petals, thin and fine as periwinkle feathers, drift out between his closed fingers. “Do you know what these flowers are, Charles?” 

The Major has so rarely heard Max use his name. “I cannot say I have been making a complete taxonomic study, no.”

“They’re called Bachelor’s Buttons. And here’s the thing. I have a dress that’d look perfect with ‘em. But I don’t want to wear it  _ to bury you _ and I don’t wanna put these flowers on your grave because you were too stubborn or stupid or scared to stop this. So you stop givin’ the hell up, Major, and let me kiss you.” 

Charles stares, eyes more frightened of this proposition than of death. “Max?”

“I know I’m not the right guy. But think about her and kiss me and maybe we can  _ trick  _ it.” 

_ You would scheme past Death!?  _ “Her?” 

“Him. Whoever. This… stupid, fucking person who doesn’t want your heart.” He’s crying. “Stupid like your family.” He grinds a fist into his eyes to try to obliterate his tears and fails; his hands smell like springtime. “Major… you can’t … you can’t ask me watch you be a thoracic surgeon who strangles to death!!” He sobs again. “You sure you won’t lemme talk them into it? I’m pretty good at that and I really wanna help.”  _ I wanna save you, baby.  _

“Darling, the man  _ and  _ woman I am in love with is you.”

“Then the dumb disease is wrong! It’s not unrequited! I love you, Major baby. I always have.” 

Then he kisses him like his life depends on it. 

“You taste like potpourri.” 

They both laugh - even though Max is still crying - and they cling to one another. Their mouths touch… a magnolia petal mimes Charles’ tongue and Klinger spits it out before finding his  _ actual  _ tongue - the one that speaks so beautifully and inimitably. Charles isn’t sure how Max can moan and tangle them while he’s kissing him like that; he’s just thankful the honeysuckle scent in his nose is coming from Max’s hair. 

Inside, he feels the bramble thicket give way; the thorns unwind - grow autumn hardy and red, then brittle, encased in ice. The roots coil up, poisoned by the sweetness Max sows in his skin with his clutching fingers, unable to get enough, somehow, of Charles. 

He feels it die - the thorn bush nurtured in the muscles of his heart, watered with the blood it clawed from his lungs - but it’s got nothing (the knowledge that he will continue to live and breathe without spitting out pink and white and yellow flowers enough to strew a bridal walk) on what it feels like when Max shatters beneath him, arching into his hands, begging him to continue the motions he’s gone too taut to make. 

And Klinger is still shaking - the brave, canny thing - when he goes down on Charles and makes him writhe for his touch, when he uses every clever inch of his tongue and makes every happy, admiring sound he knows to transform a man previously dying of suffocation by flora into a man breathless for  _ him _ . It doesn’t take much; Max secures the ending with his touch so that he can kiss along the bones of the Major’s rocking hips, trace warm love letters on the inside of his thigh with his tongue. 

“You should’ve been first,” he says into the man’s skin, his warm breath making him shiver after all he’s just been made to feel. “And you shoulda told me.” 

“Darling, I think you will realize that I am not being at all hyperbolic when I say that death would have been a small price to pay for the sight of your face in that moment.”

“So stay alive and keep making me look like that.” 

“A fine plan.” 

*** 

Given what they have endured, Potter permits his newly joined pair to escape to Tokyo for a few days of r&r, where Maxwell takes Charles quite aback by asking to visit the botanical gardens. 

“Maxwell, is this some cruel form of teasing me?” 

“Nope. Flowers got me to you, Major baby, so now I kinda like ‘em. Besides I wanna learn the ones that we had all over us - y’know, when we got together.”

“Whatever for, my love?”

“My bouquet, of course.” 

Charles just smiles at his side, proving to be a very indulgent fiancé. Flowers in the sheets will never be one of the things he requires, but as long as Maxwell is to be found in his bed, nothing else really matters. 

End! 


End file.
